Fight or Flight or Whatever

What do you do, when at the core of who you are is a coward? This is what comedian, Rob Norman, asks the audience when he recounts his experience of being robbed at his apartment.

In 2008, Rob was lying in his bed wearing an Incredible Hulk t-shirt with not pants, listening to Leslie Feist’s song “1234,” when he heard someone come through the back door. Thinking it was his roommates, who are a part of a thrash metal band called Fatality, he went to close the door and saw two men in ski masks – one holding a beer bottle, the other holding a rifle. He looked at them, said “Aaaaaw noooo!” and then slowly closed the door.

When Rob was young, he used to have Home Alone fantasies, where he would cleverly navigate his house and resourcefully use the materials around him to ward off the home invaders. In his real life, all he could do was brace the door as the intruders slam it off the hinges, leaving Rob underneath door, defeated.

Beyond all the action and science fiction films that portray other people having second-nature instincts to use their body as a weapon, deftly handling firearms and having the courage of a lion, Rob intimates his experience of not being able to muster his primal fight or flight instinct. Is there any chance of him coming out of this situation alive?